


A Wrestler in the Dark

by Ignica



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: And yes the semaphore telegraph is also in the Count of Monte Cristo, Angry oblivious pining, Angst, BAMF Javert, Behind the Scenes, Brick Timeline, Canon Era, Competent Javert, Confused Javert, Epistolary, Fix-it for Javert's weird tendency to make policing blunders, Javert is not the world's fluffiest letter writer, Javert's dry sense of humour, M/M, No Sex, OK it's one long letter, Seriously he does make a lot of them and it's always bugged me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 07:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19421305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ignica/pseuds/Ignica
Summary: “In his eyes, Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious combatant, who was not to be laid hands upon, a wrestler in the dark whom he had had in his grasp for the last five years, without being able to throw him.”An incident report — of sorts.A confession, in its own way.A love-letter to Justice.A missive that will never be sent.





	A Wrestler in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is tagged primarily for 'Les Misérables - Victor Hugo', because it's 100% gnarly Brick canon and covers a weird period often skipped from adaptations (standard practice seems to be to either send Valjean straight to Toulon after Javert arrests him at Fantine's bedside, like in BBC Les Mis, or have him simply fight off Javert and escape, as in the musical and the 1995 film)
> 
> Briefly: Valjean confesses at Arras, walks out of the court, goes back to Montreuil, is arrested at Fantine’s bedside and thrown in jail by Javert, escapes after one day, sneaks back to his own house for the candlesticks, heads to Paris, retrieves his savings from Laffitte’s bank and buries them near Chelles on the road to Montfermeil, returns to Paris (Why? It is a mystery), and is arrested there in the act of boarding the coach to Montfermeil once more. Valjean is then taken South for retrial and condemned to death(!), since he’s also falsely convicted of belonging to a band of highwaymen. He refuses to plead for clemency, but is reprieved at the eleventh hour, perhaps by the intervention of the Church, and sent to Toulon as prisoner 9430.
> 
> So this is for anyone who’s ever wondered how all that would work out from Javert’s perspective. I had to build an obsessive timeline to write this, and it’s at the end in case anyone wants to check it for errors (please do) or finds it useful.

_17 March, 1824_

_Paris_

After a long doubt, here is no better satisfaction than to be proven right.

And it is you who have shown that to me, for which I am in your debt, 9,430 — for I know they changed your number when you were brought back to Toulon. I was right about you, _Monsieur le Maire._ Liar, dissembler, fetter-cheat and pious wretch, hypocrite who considers himself a saint among thieves, just because an old clergyman gave you a bed for the night, and we both know what happened next. Yes, I know about that too. I have the misfortune to be an expert on the subject of Jean Valjean.

How I wrestled with my suspicions! How I scoured my conscience because of them! But in the end, I was right, and that is more than enough.

9,430 is a number that suits you — since it is a warning of itself, and directly from the Bible that you were so fond of in Montreuil-sur-Mer. Not that I am an enthusiast for coincidences, but it is a famous verse:

“ _And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.”_

I was your right hand in Montreuil. I had years of you as _Monsieur le Maire,_ and by writing this letter, I will cut myself off from the memory of all that you pretended to be. Wherever you are now (and I feel that you are close), and wherever you are going (metaphysical matters are outside my remit), you won’t even feel it. Nevertheless, it is a necessary operation. Like any planned amputation, it must proceed in measured stages, incision by incision.

I will then blot this letter carefully, fold it twice, and then keep it safely in my own desk, since I lack a forwarding address.

A forwarding address! You realise, of course, that you are a dead man.

* * *

** Incision no. 1: A debacle in Arras, and a debt I owe to Napoleon Bonaparte **

When I first arrived as an Inspector for the _département_ of Pas-de-Calais, shaking the dust of Provence from my coat and the stray vowels from my accent, the _President_ of the Assize Court of Arras had been described to me as ‘tolerably intelligent’. The word ‘tolerably’ never bodes well when used to describe a man’s brains, and so it proved. He had a mind like a bookcase, filled with other men’s ideas, disguising the fact that he had tolerably few ideas of his own. Over five years, he fumbled his way into acquitting three men I knew to be guilty, and came near to convicting one who was innocent. I suppose you recall that one; his name was Champmathieu.

Not that I have the right to blame the _President_ too much. I had muzzled and chained my own instincts about you, though they growled at me nightly. I should have trusted them more, but when the whole authority and might of of the Préfecture de Police informs you that you are sorely mistaken — you tell yourself that you are mistaken. But nonetheless, the _President_ of the Assize Court of Arras was a fool.

After the revelation of your confession, I nearly missed getting a timely order to arrest you, because you had impressed this trained spaniel of the Law as being a man of fine character. To stop a self-admitted criminal walking out of a courtroom would have taken a notch more resolve than he possessed. Faced with undeniable proof that you were an impostor, and had said as much before his very eyes, he spent valuable hours chasing his tail before writing the order for your arrest and sending a messenger to ride with it to Montreuil. Do you know what finally sank you, Valjean? It was not your previous life of crime. You will hardly believe it, but you know me to be a truthful bastard: when you were questioning Cochepaille about his tattoo commemorating Napoleon’s landing at Cannes, you called Bonaparte _‘L’ Empereur’_ and not ‘Bonaparte’. Such was the necessary proof that you were no Royalist, and therefore a wrong’un in the eyes of the _President_ of the Assize Court of Arras.

At least you did not call Bonaparte _‘L’Autre Roi’_ , or I’d probably have been instructed to shoot you on sight.

* * *

** Incision no. 2: A second and more personal debacle, of which I am not proud **

The man who handed me the order to arrest you was a sergeant of mine named Philippon, like one of Bonaparte’s generals. Just like his namesake, he was a man of dispatch. He had left Arras at an ungodly hour, ridden through the dark, and arrived at my lodgings in Montreuil with the order for your arrest in his hand.

“He confessed,” was all he said. It was all that was needed — had it been Champmathieu who’d confessed, Philippon would not have been standing on my doorstep, exhausted, triumphant, and spattered with mud. You can imagine that I got into my overcoat briskly. It’s no easy thing to keep one’s instincts kennelled for five years, when they snap at you each time you greet a certain local dignitary: _look, there’s a fox. There’s a fox. Did we mention that we found you a fox? There’s the damn fox, are you blind as well as stupid!_ My instincts were right all along, Valjean. They are good dogs. They have never played me false, and all the reward they asked was that I at last lay a hand on your collar.

I admit it, I was a little light-headed. I must have been, since I did not take one obvious precaution, and check to see if you’d left any letters to be dispatched from Montreuil’s post-house. As the order for your arrest was just about to reach me, a letter for a respectable banker called Monsieur Laffitte was travelling almost as rapidly in the direction of Paris.

The guards in the little prison of Montreuil were unused to handling a prisoner of your type. I told them that you were to be stripped completely, and provided with other clothing. You were also to be relieved of your shoes, and provided with rags for your feet. You were exceptionally strong and devious, I said, and you had plenty of form. I warned my men sincerely, they nodded sincerely, the instructions went in one ear and out of the other, and a few hours later Philippon came back to give me the glad news that the notorious escape artist had escaped again, having concealed about his person a some piece of metal, possibly a nail, with which he’d scraped enough mortar away from a window-bar to wrench it free. Then he must have dropped to the ground from a roof, displaying the athleticism for which provincial Mayors are renowned. And why had he had a piece of metal about his person? Because there had been some dispute about whether it was entirely proper to make even a former Mayor strip naked.

_C’etait le comble_. The last straw. The experimental limit of human stupidity. I believe I may have sworn once or twice.

And then, I was on the hunt for you again.

* * *

** Incision no. 3: The ingenious communicator of Monsieur Chappe **

I suppose you might imagine that I instantly called for my horse, loaded my pistols, leapt into the saddle, and galloped after you into the darkness, bristling with rage.

But I am a policeman, and you know the thing about policemen? They all have colleagues, Valjean. Even me. So in fact, after confirming that you were not at your own house (or rather, the house of _Monsieur le Maire_ ), what I did was visit the postmaster in Montreuil, hammer on his door until the man attended to me, clad in his nightshirt, and inquire if you’d sent off any _billets-doux._ This line of enquiry led me to believe that you might drop in on a certain M. Laffitte of the Rue d’Artois, Paris. Then I wrote a message of my own. Then I made it shorter. Then shorter still.

Once it was as brief as it could possibly get, I dispatched Phillipon with it to Thélus, a tiny hamlet of a place not far from Arras, situated next to a hill. On that hill, there is a tower, and in that tower, there are two men: one of them watching through a telescope, and the other perched on a stool in front of two levers, operating a contraption of wooden arms that sprouts from the top of the roof, like a clever scarecrow. It is the Chappe semaphore telegraph, and if the concentration of either man lapses, and the one with the telescope fails to see a message coming through from the preceding tower, or the man with the levers fails to correctly relay it to the next one, they are both fined five sous. To use it in a real emergency, it was only necessary to show police identification. As soon as it was dawn, and the towers could communicate, the message was sent.

You may have heard of the long arm of the law, Vajlean. After backing on your tracks several times to through me off the scent, you headed to Paris to collect the money, but Monsieur Chappe’s ingenious relay system more than kept pace with you. Within twelve hours, the news of your escape was on a desk in the _Préfecture de Police_ , along with my suggestions as to where you might be apprehended: at the bank of Monsieur Laffitte, and as a longer shot, at the departure-point of whatever coach serviced the route to Montfermeil.

* * *

Meanwhile, after making up a trio of armed search-parties, I really did call for my horse, load my pistols, and get into the saddle with considerable dispatch. It might not to too late to track you down, if I was lucky (and did I ask myself if I would really shoot you, were I the one to find you? I confess that I did not, Valjean). I was not lucky, but I was not as entirely unfortunate or stupid as you might suppose. It was still quite dark. You would not dare travel with a lantern; you would flee along a path you knew by heart. I recalled that one of your few pastimes in Montreuil was to take long walks about the district, and so the search parties tracked along three of the routes I remembered you most favouring. I myself took the fourth. The going was slow, and it got slower after dawn because of the necessity of stopping to question anyone who might have seen you pass. By the time I managed to pick up any trace of you, it was well past mid-day and I was making my way back to Montreuil by another route.

At a broken-down inn, next to which a large goat was tethered to a walnut tree, I got my lead. Yes, a man had passed by this morning, leaned to rest himself against the walnut-tree, and asked for water. Also for provisions, for which he paid two francs, then tied them up in a bundle on a stick and rapidly departed. The proprietress, an old woman with the swollen legs and laborious walk of a dropsy case, waddled slowly beside me, pointing out the way the mysterious man had gone. No, she herself did not have much call to visit Montreuil itself, and she had never seen its famous mayor except once, from a considerable distance, when he was giving a speech on the opening of the new school. Travel was painful for her, and in any case, even the humblest hostelry must have its host, so Amalthée was most of her company these days. And she scratched the goat behind its ears.

She also told me that the discreet stranger had been black-haired, his hair coarse and straight. I cannot describe to you my chagrin upon learning this, but I pressed on with my inquiries. ‘As dark as me?’ I asked her. For the purposes of comparison, she inspected my unlovely countenance. No, the man had not been nearly as dark as me, it turned out — providing we were both of us given a good scrub first. In fairness, I had been travelling hard since dawn. No doubt you had been travelling hard yourself.

Indeed, she could be remarkably certain that the traveller’s hair had been black, for a fringe had escaped from beneath the brim of his cap, and another tuft stuck up at the neck. It was strange, really, since his eyebrows were not nearly so dark. That is the very devil of trying to recruit a police spy, Valjean. Sometimes you find the Holy Grail: an eye for detail, a memory like tar-paper, and a burning desire to pry — and the owner of these gifts turns out to be a dropsical old lady who owns a broken-down inn, a walnut tree, and a goat. Nevertheless, she _was_ a police spy for one time in her life, and she served me a good turn too.

In my imagination, I do what she did not dare, and sneak a closer look at that cap of yours: pinned into the band of it are several locks of horsehair. I can see how cunningly the fringe has been arranged, and I especially appreciate the extra lock of hair at the nape. You were always good with animals, just as you were sentimental about children, for the same reasons that clever criminals quite often are: an animal or a child is not going to subject you to moral scrutiny. I can imagine you, just as dawn was breaking after your escape, making your way past a field in which there was a black horse, leaning over the fence with a handful of that tempting long grass which is always just out of reach, and stealing a few locks of its mane with your pocket-knife. I never saw that cap and never will — it’s probably rotting in a ditch somewhere — but I know it was a work of art. I would like to have it on the wall in a glass case, Valjean, in a special museum where only policemen could admire it.

I knew you had been at that inn, as surely as if you had cut your name on that walnut tree for me to find.

I tried to give the proprietress two francs for her information. You will never believe it, Valjean, but some poor people are actually honest: she protested that she’d done nothing for the money, and tied up some cheese and bread in a cloth for me, just as she had for you. I rode off _à toute vitesse_ , no doubt leaving the good woman under the impression that I was a species of lunatic.

I mentally enumerated the possible ways you might try to reach Paris. The obvious was to try to reach Abbeville or Amiens, disguise yourself (though your shoulders must make this as challenging for you as my height does for me), and take a coach from there. Slightly less obvious was to go a short way due North, to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and then catch the coach South again. In the end, I suspect that what happened was that you deliberately wasted nearly two days, slogging on foot back in the direction of Arras, where you were a notorious criminal and should definitely never go. Outside Arras, or Béthune, or perhaps Lens, you must have thrown yourself on the mercy of someone whose identity I have never been able to determine. In the aftermath of your escape, I made a shortlist of the local worthies and altruists with whom you were in the habit of corresponding, and who owned a country estate that you could approach without running the gauntlet of a town’s scrutiny. All I can say is that I suspect that one of these men is a very good liar. This personage provided you with clothing suited to a minor man of business, and must also have possessed a carriage, for they took you in the direction of Cambrai, where you succeeded in getting an outside seat on the mail-coach to Paris; a bold and risky move, but that would be your style.

The man who had bought the ticket to Paris was a swarthy weathered fellow, dressed in a plain fashion, he spoke very little but with an accent of the South, and he said that he was stonemason, a subject on which you are not ignorant. I imagine that the swarthiness came from an infusion of pounded walnut twigs, not yet quite in leaf but full of sap, which you had stealthily obtained from a walnut-tree to which a goat was tethered, next to a broken-down inn. I conclude that the Southern accent came from your time in Toulon, where I know very well that one of the prisoners’ pastimes was to try on each other’s ways of speaking, until the more skilled among them could change his accent like a man would turn his jacket. Perhaps it even came from your memories of me. I should have liked to have heard it.

The loyal Phillipon spent a tedious few hours at the semaphore telegraph station, waiting for an acknowledgment, as sundry other communications twitched up and down the line. When he received one, it came with an additional order for me. I had been seconded to Paris, to aid in the search for you. I will be frank with you: your antics have done my career no harm at all.

My Parisian colleagues missed you when you went to collect the cash (clever Valjean, you had instructed Laffitte that you intended to move your savings to another bank in the city, and would meet him and sign for it there). But they had a second swing at you, because you really were determined to collect Fantine’s girl from Montfermeil. I confess, up until that moment, the only thing that made me believe your interest in her had not been a ruse was the fury with which you’d threatened me, standing beside her mother’s corpse and brandishing a bed-rail. It had been a quietly murderous fury, and dangerous: the fury of a man who had only one more thing left that he could lose. At that time, I did not understand why you should care so much for an orphan you had never met, but give me enough time and I’ll work things out in the end.

It was not literally my hand that closed on your collar in Paris, but it might as well have been. The long arm of the law, Valjean.

* * *

** Incision no. 4: The Revenge of Petit Gervais **

So Petit Gervais had his vengeance at last, for you were marched all the way back South to stand trial. This trial was scheduled to occur in the district of Var, in a town some distance from Toulon, and nine hundred kilometers from Paris, called Draguignan. Nine hundred kilometres on the chain, and in the height of summer! Perhaps you recalled some of the route from a previous excursion. I hope those forty sous were worth it, _Monsieur le Maire_. I have not forgotten nor forgiven the meanness of your real crimes.

But as for the rest of them? Never mind the forty sous, or the fact that even if the Bishop had let you off the hook for burgling him, I had not; it was the story about M. Laffitte and the six hundred thousand francs that marched enticingly beside you, like a robber bride. A dangerous companion to keep.

And then I learned that your hearing in the Southern district of Var was due to take place in the _Cour d’Assises_ of Draguignan, of all places in the Var that it possibly could. That bothered me, Valjean. There is a _Cour d’Assises_ in Toulon itself, close to the _bagne_ and very used to dealing with recidivists; how could that one be too busy? I could not escape the feeling that the distinguishing features of the situation were, Firstly: that Draguignan was near enough to both Toulon and Digne (near where the robbery of the boy had occurred) to pass muster. Secondly: that there was pretty certain to be no-one there who had heard of you. Thirdly: that the town had its own guillotine.

And fourthly: six hundred thousand francs. My instincts raised their hackles at this, but no trial, fair or otherwise, could take place before you were back in the South. So I wrote to a man I’d known in the police force in Toulon, a diligent and honest man who’d risen high in the police from his inexhaustible appetite for paperwork; I never understood how he could stand it, but still I appreciated his thoroughness, and he appreciated mine. From this vantage point, I kept an eye on Draguignan as your chain gang approached it.

I also took the precaution of writing to a certain Monsieur Chabouillet who worked directly for the _Préfet de Police_ , and informing him that I feared some plotted injustice was afoot. No doubt you think it very forward for a mere Inspector to write to a man in such a lofty position, but if my instincts are my own good dogs, then I am Monsieur Chabouillet’s. It was he who once picked me out as having the potential to be anything more than a prison screw, and he knows my foibles well. I’ve flushed a lot of game for him in my time, and occasionally, it has been game in the employ of the State. He takes a particular satisfaction in laying his hand on the collar of a corrupt official. Fortunately, such vermin are rare, but they exist: there are counterfeits of Justice who pass themselves off as policemen, magistrates, or public officials. Their place is the galleys and even there, their existence is a poison, for they still believe themselves not so bad as the rest. You see, I know how you think. I would be less disgusted with you, Valjean, had you simply remained a thief.

As a final precaution, I dug out from amongst my old correspondence a certain letter, written in a fussy, wavering script markedly at odds with its tone, which was one of amused authority.

I had never actually met the sender, but I felt that I almost knew him.

* * *

** Incision no. 5 : A trial in the South **

It was all about the money, of course. The loot, the pelf, the _camelotte._ Everyone wanted to know what you’d done with your ill-gotten gains from the trinket factory, from all those clever fingers threading and polishing, fashioning catches, slides, and bolt-rings of an ingenuity never seen before. And who invented most of those, _Monsieur le Maire_? They all had a prisoner’s thrifty cunning, and why that alone did not tip me off, I’ll never know. I still remember your hands, freckled with fresh solder burns over old scars, the cuffs kept close-buttoned even in the heat of summer. I must have been blind. A selective form of blindness, and I admit, I still do not understand it.

Back to base details, since that’s what I do best. Six hundred thousand francs, Valjean! You were clever to be generous with money that never rightfully belonged to you, skimming off just enough not to cause suspicion. Money earned by a recidivist on the run, even in the shelter of a legitimate business, belongs in the coffers of the State. One day I will see that it goes there - but I suspected that some of my colleagues in the Var thought differently. Six hundred thousand francs! We both know of men who will cut any throat of your choice for forty louis, and if you give them sixty they will hand you back your change, and spit. When condemned to death, they give one curt nod, like a head falling away from the blade. From some occupations, a man finds it hard to retire.

The prosecutor of Draguignan argued that you were such a man. That when you had been released from Toulon, you had not set out North for Pontarlier according to instructions given by the prison, but had joined a savage band of Provençal highwaymen, who left no-one that they robbed alive before their own treacherous natures turned on them, and one of them peached on the rest, who were all captured and guillotined two months later. All but one escapee, and that final man had been you.

And he succeeded in convincing the jury of this piece of utter fiction.

Because whatever else you may be, Jean Valjean, I would swear in court that you are no murderer, and that you always work alone. You steal alone, you escape alone, and if you _were_ to kill — which far from impossible — you would kill alone, out of fury or revenge, but never for money. You have never belonged to any band of robbers, in the South or anywhere else. And yet you refused to appeal, as if you already knew it would be useless. I could not believe it. 24601, the man who never gave up, refused to lodge an appeal. So I was forced to the conclusion that certain lawmen of Var did not have even the principles of some murderers I’ve known, and had offered to sell you your life — albeit in shackles — for the trifling sum of, say, six hundred thousand francs.

You were not inclined to buy.

They gave you a month to think things over. Four weeks in the condemned cell of Draguignan — I never served in the prison there, but I know the dead man’s hold to be a cellar with neither outside air nor daylight, into which one descends by a ladder. In addition, Draguignan is home to a faintly absurd guillotine, mounted on a trolley and kept in a shed. On days of Justice, it is wheeled it out on rails, like the first and last act of an unoriginal magician. But no magician could escape from the place you were kept, not even you. An ordinary man might have held out for a week in there before he accepted that he was beaten, but I knew you better.

You were always headstrong.

Five days went by, then a week. I took to counting off the time: ten days, then eleven. Some time in the small hours of the thirteenth day, while my body lay asleep, I found myself on the scaffold in Draguignan, attending your execution as a witness for the State. Since I have been obliged to perform that unlovely duty several times in the past, the dream was as realistic as an artist in death could require. You were brave, of course. You have never been anything other than brave.

I heard your head hit the basket, Valjean. I saw your blood spatter my sleeve. I awoke only half-way, after the fashion of nightmares, with your disembodied face suspended before my own. You looked at me in that sleepy way that serves the dead for an expression, as if you were some crooked John the Baptist, and I’d demanded your head on a platter. Then I woke up again in earnest, plastered with sweat. I got up and paced. You had given yourself two weeks to live, and I still did not understand _why_. So I paced up and down, up and down, like a child who does not dare go back to bed.

That was the answer, of course: the child called Cosette. Without the money, and with an undischarged conviction over your head, you were worse than useless to Fantine’s orphaned brat. She would be better off where she was (and yes, I have met Thénardier and his wife), or in a charity-school or an orphanage. But with money, you were her doting grandfather, with his daughter dead, his grandchild the sole remaining light in his life, and no-one with any sense or delicacy would question the matter. It was pathetic in its way, this desire for a hearth, a home, and a child to dote upon — and it did not escape me that it would make a decent cover story, too. But at the core of it was this truth: it was no more than the life you might have had, if only you’d remained an honest man.

For that unknown girl and that unknown future, you would risk your life. It might not work. You might rot at your ease in a pit of quicklime, the money might rot where you’d hidden it, the girl might step into the same sort of shoes her _grisette_ mother had worn — secondhand satin slippers, battered and patched and dyed a defiant colour — and rot in another way, but if all that happened, you would still have tried. But frankly, your chances were poor, and getting worse with each passing day. If I did not act, it would soon be too late.

It is time to turn to the missive I mentioned before, of which I still possess a copy. It is not quite an illuminated manuscript, but it proved sufficiently enlightening to me when I first read it, in the Spring of 1819. It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece of equivocation. I am not much for literature, Valjean, but there are certain written works I can appreciate.

Of course it was from the Bishop. Did you think that the story of his criminal guest had sunk from all human memory? They’re probably still talking about it in Digne to this day.

* * *

**_23rd May, 1819_ **

_The Old Hospital_

_Digne_

_Basses-Alpes_

_Inspector Javert,_

_I received your letter with interest, since it promised to shed light on an incident which I recall vividly. Alas, my first duty must be to disappoint you. My body, which has been a good servant for the best part of eighty years, is not what it was. I cannot travel, and in addition, I am quite as blind as Bartimaeus. It is not to be regretted, since my sister is an excellent reader and scribe, but it renders me useless as a witness for a man’s identity._

_On your second point, I can confirm that I once gifted the discharged convict Jean Valjean with a quantity of silverware. My diary reminds me that I encountered him — or rather, he encountered me — on the evening of the eighth of October in 1815, my house having been pointed out to him as a place that might offer him shelter. He was shabby, hungry, and athirst; nevertheless the first thing he did on crossing my threshold was tell me his name, show his convict’s passport, and demand with some insistence to pay for his food and lodging. It did not occur to him to beg. Such cases are always difficult, Inspector, and I am sure you know the stubborn pride of these men, it is all they have left. However, at last I persuaded him to accept dinner and a bed,_ gratis _._

_On your third point, I do recall Jean Valjean mentioning his destination because I knew the town myself, and was able to discuss its merits at length; it was the Northern dairying town of Pontarlier._

_The following morning, it occurred to me that a former prisoner, attempting to start afresh in life at past the age of forty with every circumstance against him, could not expect to get far without monetary support. For this purpose, the Almighty made it known to me that the man should become the owner of some old silver forks and spoons for which I no longer had much use, and sell them at the first opportunity. It struck me that this plan was sound, as His plans tend to be._

_To my consternation, having commended my strange visitor and my former cutlery to the care of God, later in the day I saw him again, accompanied by four gendarmes. Jean Valjean had been stopped on the road, his passport demanded, his belongings searched, and as it was not believed either that it was God’s will that such a man should possess silver forks and spoons, nor that a Bishop would relinquish such things, he was dragged back to my house by the collar. I vouched for him, and he was released. It then occurred to me that he would stand an even better chance of becoming honest with the aid of a couple of silver candlesticks I had owned for thirty years— and without ever bothering to find out if candles would not cast just as good a light if they stood in sockets of pewter._

_You will be please to hear that they do, and that by such a light my sister is finishing this very letter, after which I shall attempt to sign it._

_A profession like your own imposes harsh duties on the spirit, Inspector, and your devotion to justice is commendable. Please accept my most distinguished sentiments,_

_Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel_

_Bishop of Digne_

_Post-scriptum \- You may recall that poor Bartimaeus experienced a miraculous return to the world of sight. Should I have a similar reversal, I will be sure to let you know._

_Post-post-scriptum \- My sister reminds me that the spoons were only half a set, and not a true match for the forks. No doubt this somewhat reduced their sale value._

* * *

In addition to this letter, I compiled a brief history of your sorry life, as much as I knew of it. You were convicted at twenty-six, Valjean, on the 22nd of April, 1796, at which age you had not yet strayed outside the Northerly district of Brie. You served nineteen years in the Toulon _bagne_ ; upon your release in the autumn of 1815, you obeyed your orders to travel North in the direction of Pontarlier. You had not got very far in that direction before you encountered the irrepressibly forgiving Bishop of Digne. Some time after robbing a lad of forty sous, you chucked the notion of going to Pontarlier, and headed for Montreuil-sur-Mer, where you spent your time building up both your fortune, and your cover story as a God-fearing philanthropist.

A shabby and discreditable biography. Nevertheless, I would like to know where you found the time to spend two months with a band of murderous robbers in the South.

Of course that was not true. What was true was that you were probably concealing the location of six hundred thousand francs, money rightfully belonging to the State, but the proper punishment for this is not the guillotine. You should have been properly convicted of your real crimes, and offered terms: fifty thousand francs for the orphan girl, some to be spent on a decent plain upbringing in a charity-school, and the rest held in trust until her eighteenth birthday — provided you revealed the location of the money. At the time, I admit I came up with this plan as a sort of theoretical test, and I thought at the time that you would fail it.

In an office of the _Préfecture de Police_ on the Rue de Jerusalem _,_ I made three copies of the Bishop’s letter in my own hand, in the presence of two police witnesses, one of whom was my old patron, Monsieur Chabouillet, and all three of us signed them off. I posted the original and one copy down to my pen-pushing contact in Toulon, where there were still several other men who would recall me — along with a witnessed deposition from myself that to the best of my considerable knowledge, you had never had the opportunity to be a highwayman in the South, or anywhere else. Then I held my breath. You had twelve days to live.

Our contacts in the South managed to save your neck, though in my opinion they did not do right by the State. Indeed, it had been most irregular that your trial had not been held in Toulon. Nothing was ever made public, but a few men in the _Département de Justice_ of the Var quietly lost their public positions, among them the public prosecutor of Draguignan, and the President of its _Cour d’Assises_. Also the public prosecutor’s cousin, who happened to be the _Commissaire_ of the very police station in Paris where you had been taken after trying to board that coach to Montfermeil — which explained a great deal. That man lost his position too, but it was all done quietly. I can tell you that Monsieur Chabouillet, who had spent more than a month sharpening his claws for him, was extremely put out. But he has a diplomat’s nature, and kept his silence. I do not hold with secretive and partial justice, Valjean. Justice should speak with a loud voice. A corrupt official should be cast down to the galleys and never return, since he is a worse monster than an ordinary criminal. A stench like that shames the nation of France.

Besides, these events did not truly clear your name of belonging to a band of highwaymen. Nevertheless, by the inexhaustible clemency of His Majesty, you were spared execution.

Once the news of the reprieve reached Paris (I heard of it through the papers), the _Constitutionnel_ , keen to bruit that some pious pillar of the community had turned out to be a scoundrel, and even keener to hear the music of the guillotine, published a brief complaint that the convict Valjean had only been spared by the meddlesome Catholic clergy.

I suppose even a red rag like the _Constitutionnel_ can have the truth of the matter occasionally.

* * *

** Incision no. 6: The worst hospitality in the _Département_ of Seine-et-Oise **

After that undignified effort to save you from _La Monte-à-regret_ , you will not believe that when I read of your death by plummeting from the rigging of the _Orion_ , after another bout of life-saving theatrics, half of me hoped to God it was true. I’d not overlooked the fact that as soon as you were back in the _bagne_ , you’d have started plotting a breakout. But to die saving a man’s life, even a convict’s, is still a brave deed. There would be a rightness to such an end. I told myself that when you fell, deliberately or not, you knocked your head on the hull, and drowned unawares. It would have been your only honourable means of escape — and mine too, for I would no longer be reminded at strange moments of a certain number, and wonder where the bearer of it was now. I am a hard-headed fellow, Valjean. There is no room in my skull for such indulgences.

This relief lasted about two months — and as I said at the start, you are even now supposed to be a dead man. But I began to have my doubts.

At the end start of this February, Fate (a being I am beginning to see as some bored bureaucrat with a damnable sense of humour) dictated that I should be handed a stack of missing persons reports, amongst which was a complaint by an innkeeper on the fringes of the _département_ of Seine-et-Oise that his ward, an orphan girl of eight, had been snatched from her home by a menacing brigand. Naturally, he feared that the worst had befallen the poor child.

The girl’s name was Cosette.

Her dead mother’s name had been Fantine.

I went to a coaching inn you may conceivably have heard of, called the Pewter Platter, and squandered a portion of my salary by making the trip to Montfermeil. The roads around Montfermeil have potholes that in all probability pre-date the Revolution, and at the end of one such road is a miserable hostelry, with which you may again be familiar. It is named ‘The Sergeant of Waterloo’, and were there a contest for the most shameless, rapacious, and insolent villain in all of France, its innkeeper would stand a good chance of taking the prize. A man like Thénardier is of a different breed to your own, Valjean. It is my belief that some part of you is still ashamed of what you are — it must be so, to force you to conceal it under the mask of _Monsieur le Maire,_ and to hanker after the illusion of having a grandchild — and yet you do not truly change, but choose instead to gild a pigsty and call it a chapel. That is what is unforgivable.

But by God, that Thénardier! A jack of all trades, provided they were crooked ones. He had complained his ward had been abducted, but did not seem over-glad to see an Inspector who’d come all the way from Paris to begin the task of finding her. His displeasure took the form of a deference that set my teeth on edge, and questioning him was like pulling out splinters that all broke short. Still, I resolved to stay the night in the place, and asked for my choice of rooms. My host first brought me to the bridal chamber, where I was (as you perhaps were) invited to admire the wedding headdress of his lovely wife, a claim I find hard to credit unless the lady’s head was once three sizes smaller. The curtains were the colour of stale claret, and the room as chilly as a meat-safe. I ducked out of staying there, saying that I would have to account for my expenses later, and took a lesser room.

And where, exactly, had the abducted child kept her own small bed? Why, _Monsieur l’Inspecteur_ , in the very same place as our own children, on a trundle-bed which we have since given to an indigent family of the district. Also, her little quilt trimmed in blue _,_ just the same as what my two daughters have — yes, Inspector, that went along with the mattress.

Liars like Thénardier can never resist laying it on with a trowel.

After several more revisions of his story, he told me that the girl had been taken away by her grandfather, a farming type with the plausible name of Monsieur Lambert. His expression as he concocted this tale was as pure as a jug of cream, from which a fat fly has been scooped before it is brought to table. I asked for a description of the man, and like a practiced liar, Thénardier stuck closely to invented details of clothing, mentioning as little as possible about face, build, age, or accent.

But by questioning the coachmen who plied the route between The Pewter Platter and Lagny, and liberally oiling their throats with the Platter’s wine, I’d already heard of a broad-shouldered eccentric who’d once paid to go all the way to the end of the route, but alighted in the middle of nowhere just outside Chelles. He had worn a yellow coat and a rough cap. He’d carried a staff in one of his big fists. He was hale, but not young.

None of this featured in Thénardier’s description of Cosette’s grandpapa. He was a cipher of a good plain man, in good plain clothes. He was kindly. He was well-off.

“An’ he bought Cosette a dolly,” added one of the Thénardiers’ daughters enviously, from a corner where the two of them had rigged up an old coat and blanket as a den, and hence gone unnoticed. “A great tall dolly in a pink dress. She had real hair an’ glass eyes an’...”

Thénardier crossed the room in three strides, and swatted the girl out of her refuge, which collapsed in a heap. She scurried off yelping, and I could hear her mother giving her an earful somewhere out of sight, but the damage was done. I did not believe that Monsieur Lambert, a country landowner and no doubt as careful with his money as such men are, would ever have bought a fancy doll. No. If he brought a toy to win the confidence of a grand-daughter he’d never seen — which would be a sensible precaution — it would have been made or purchased in advance.

Impulsiveness is a criminal trait, Valjean. Sentiment and impulsiveness: two of the three fixed points that make up the criminal type. The last one is brutality.

I looked as unimaginative as possible (I flatter myself that I am not bad at this) and recorded all of Thénardier’s prattlings in a notebook. Then I put the wind up him by saying that I’d heard certain inns in the area were occasionally used as depots for contraband, and that surely, he wouldn’t mind if I took the opportunity to give his own place a clean bill of health? Of course he dared not stop me, and so I stalked officiously about for one final time, rapping at skirting-boards with my cane. In reality, I was hoping to find something entirely different.

And there it was, under the collapsed den, tucked into a pocket of the old coat. A little man made of straw, his arms held out stiffly, and tied to his hand, his straw wife. I could see how things had turned out; the burning disappointment of those two little girls, looking at the impossible doll that made their own look shabby. And so you made another mistake. Sentiment really will be the death of you one day.

You were betrayed, Valjean. You were given away, not by Thénardier or his good lady, but by their daughters, and the skill of your own hands. I can close my eyes now and see you, _Monsieur le Maire_ , sitting on the bench beside the church in Montreuil — most un-mayorlike — knotting a straw rabbit and hardly looking down at your fingers as they work, strong and deft and sure. I can see the future recipient of the rabbit hopping from foot to foot, with all the patience of their six of seven years, but they’d not have to wait long; you could turn out one of those things in the time it took me to patrol from the church to the _Mairie_. Where do grown men learn a skill like that, _Monsieur le Maire_?

You nearly made a thief of me then, for I was halfway to pocketing your handiwork myself: evidence, if only to me, that you were probably still alive. But only one of us is the type to rob a child, just as only one of us is the type to make such trinkets in the first place, and as far as I know those two girls still have your masterpieces to this day.

The afternoon grew late. I took my leave of my genial host, got into my greatcoat, and tramped off to the next nearest inn in the district, stamping the freezing mud from my boots and complaining that I would never again imbibe what Monsieur Thénardier was pleased to call ‘wine’, were I offered a _monarque_ to drink it. What I was served by the landlord there was very little better, but I made appreciative noises and left my cane propped ostentatiously against the bar, so that all could see I was a dread agent of the Law. Petty rivalry (and perhaps an urge to be rid of me) did the rest: indeed, Monsieur, it was surprising that they still served such swill at _Au Sargent_ , but the old man there was as good at burning through cash as he was unfastidious about acquiring it. Thénardier’s professional rival leaned in, close and confiding, exuding the smell of mutton fat and itching to tell his tale. He fell into my palm like a plum.

“ _See here, I don’t suppose you’ve come about the girl? The one they said was snatched away? Because — ”_

— because, as a matter of fact, I had. I showed him my identification. When he saw I was a genuine policeman, his eyes glinted. No, he did not like Thénardier at all.

“ _Monsieur, they sold that child to a passing stranger, and no need for a receipt. The whole village knows it.”_

* * *

** Incision no. 7: Paris, 1824 **

It is getting late, and I must finish this by candlelight, as a March wind rattles the shutters like a suspicious watchman.

My amputation from you is almost complete, Valjean. Even so, I am not about to go to my august _Préfet_ , or even to old Chabouillet, and inform either man that I may well have tracked down a dangerous recidivist by his skill in straw-work. You are still a dead man in the eyes of the law, and I am still a fool in my own. Nevertheless, we are neither of us empty-handed, for there is no better satisfaction than to be proven right.

I was right: your kindness was flawed. Only you would attempt to go through life wielding charity like a cudgel, and forgiveness like a lockpick. You will always be a thief, and your stolen kindness will be the death of you one day. And of others, if you are not careful. So be very careful, Jean Valjean, because your last arrest belongs to me.

You were right: you really did intend to fetch that girl, since it is obviously you who has done it now. I expect that as you sit quartering her an apple or teaching her to read, you occasionally think that a solitary hound like Javert can have no notion of why you would take such risks, just to obtain the life of an old grandfather. But I know. The punishment of every intelligent thief who has evaded Justice is to try going straight, and then reflect on how cheap they sold their good name.

But the girl is not yours. Like the money you took from Laffitte’s, she belongs to the State, and you will do a great wrong if you keep her, though you never harm a hair of her head (you never will harm a hair of her head, I know, and anyone who tries to will regret it). But I also know that you will not have the honesty to tell her that the truth of her origins, and I have a nasty suspicion that your damned sentiment will try to make her into a restored vision of her mother — who is dead, Valjean, and rotting in a pauper’s grave, and will not rise again if you fashion her daughter into a marriageable poppet, and get your revenge on society by wedding her to some unsuspecting Marquis. Whether you spend ten days with that girl, or ten thousand, you’ll spend that time quaking, lest she find out that she’s a child of the gutter, just as we are. I could live with it. So could you. So can she, but you will not let her.

The truth is stronger than sentiment, always. The girl is a whore’s orphan, you are a _bagnard_ and a recidivist _—_ and I? I am a minor instrument of the State, and all my usefulness lies in obedience to rule. Unlike you, I have never asked for anything more.

When I finally arrest you, we will be done with one another, and I will no longer have to remind myself that I thought I would not care if you were alive or dead. Somehow it is important now, not so much that you are alive (it was the old Bishop who saved you from the guillotine, not I) but that you receive only the most scrupulous justice from me. I do not pretend to understand this, and it is a weakness that I acknowledge only to these pages. But when we do meet, God forbid that I flinch from you again, the way I once flinched beside that deathbed in Montreuil. If it comes to that, I would rather you killed me outright. Perhaps you will do it, one day.

Enough. I feel that we will meet again, and soon — and though we both know of my past mistakes, my instincts remain pretty good dogs, Valjean. I hear that a peculiar figure, bundled up in an overcoat that makes it had to tell if he is unusually broad across the shoulders, or merely prone to the _grippe_ , has been sighted on the other side of the river, in the parish of Saint-Médard. An eccentric among eccentics, for such men have a tendency to be close with their money, and will cross the street rather than walk past a beggar. But not this one. They say that coat of his is padded out with banknotes, and that he is always good for a few sous.

He is, apparently, a species of philanthropist.

_À tout à l'heure._

**Author's Note:**

> Draguignan, used as the setting for Valjean’s trial in the Var, possessed an Assize Court, a prison, and a guillotine. Actually, it still possesses a working guillotine, courtesy of a worringyly enthusiastic historical recreation society.
> 
> The Semaphore Telegraph, the method used to communicate Valjean’s escape to Paris, is a really interesting subject and there's an informative Wikipedia page on it.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Now for the Stupidly Detailed Timeline:**
> 
> **December 1815** \- Valjean arrives in Montreuil, rescues two children from a fire, and starts a new life.
> 
> **Spring 1818** \- 1. Javert must arrive in Montreuil at about this time, since by 1823 he’s served in the place for five years. 2. Fantine leaves Cosette with the Thenardiers, and returns to Montreuil, the town of her birth. 3. Valjean is now an established, wealthy businessman.
> 
> **Early 1820** \- 1. Death of Bishop Myriel; Valjean wears mourning for him. 2. Valjean reluctantly becomes Mayor of Montreuil.
> 
> **January, 1823** \- M. Batambois attacks Fantine in the street. Valjean gets Javert off her back and vows to see her cared for.
> 
> **March 25, 1823** \- Fantine’s letter, instructing the Thenardiers to hand over Cosette, is written and signed.
> 
> **A few days later - Javert reports the upcoming trial of Champmathieu to Vajlean, and a whole bunch of shit goes down:**
> 
> 1\. Valjean confesses in Arras…
> 
> 2\. returns to Montreuil since no-one thinks to stop him..
> 
> 3\. posts his letter to Laffitte’s bank…
> 
> 4\. gets arrested by Javert at Fantine’s deathbed…
> 
> 5\. escapes from Montreuil’s prison that same evening…
> 
> 6\. grabs the candlesticks and flees to Paris…
> 
> 7\. where he retrieves his money, buries all his worldly goods near Montfermeil…
> 
> 8\. returns to Paris and remains on the run for 2-3 days…
> 
> 9\. gets arrested at the Pewter Platter coaching inn…
> 
> 10\. spends the next couple of months being marched South for trial…
> 
> 11\. is condemned to death in the Var as murderous brigand…
> 
> 12\. and is spared by the intervention of the church. Phew.
> 
> **July 25, 1823** \- The report of Valjean’s recapture, trial, condemnation and reprieve is published in Paris.
> 
> **October 1823** \- The damaged warship Orion limps into Toulon for repairs.
> 
> **Nov. 16, 1823** \- Valjean escapes, after falling into the sea while rescuing a fellow prisoner on the Orion. He is thought to have drowned.
> 
> **December, 1823** \- Javert is now working in Paris, and reads about Valjean’s supposed death in the papers.
> 
> **Christmas Eve, 1823** \- Cosette is rescued from the Thenardiers by Valjean.
> 
> **January/February-ish 1824** \- Javert visits the Thenardiers in Montfermeil, trying to trace Cosette, and Thenardier fobs him off successfully, despite the fact he's clearly lying and clearly isn't a nun.
> 
> **March, 1824** \- Javert recovers his powers of cognition, goes undercover, recognises ‘the man who gives alms’ as Valjean, and passes the night at the Gorbeau tenement.
> 
> **One Day Later** \- Javert leads the ‘black hunt’ for Valjean, who escapes into the Petit-Picpus convent with Cosette.


End file.
